Wertmüller's Diary: The Transformation of Artist into Farmer

WERTMÜLLER'S DIARY:
The Transformation of Artist into Farmer
Edited and Translated by FRANKLIN D. SCOTT
With the Assistance of ROSAMOND PORTER
The story of how a talented artist of Paris and the salons
of Europe ended as a farmer on the Delaware, carrying
mud and arguing with servants, is one of many thousands
of the unknown sagas of America.
He was Adolf Ulric Wertmüller, First Painter to the
King of Sweden, member of the French Academy, an artist
of considerable skill. He painted both George Washington
and Marie Antoinette, and other notables of America,
France, and Spain. Perhaps he prized most highly his great
classical canvases of Ariadne and of Danaë and The Golden
Rain, but his friend Rembrandt Peale wrote of him after
his death:
He was chiefly employed in small portraits, for which
he was better calculated, being near sighted; in these
his high finishing was better appreciated. His Danaë
was admired by the few persons in Philadelphia that
talked about painting; but nobody thought about pur­chasing
it, partly repelled by the subject, which was
repellent to their Quaker sentiments, and by the high
price put upon it, as his 'masterpiece' — having, with
unmeasured time, lavished on it all the resources of
his art.1
In the last decade of his life this proud painter migrated
to America, married, and became a farmer along the Dela­ware.
From the river bank he carried shovelfulls of mud
to fertilize the fields for grain. He made his 20-mile trips
to Philadelphia by horseback, except when he had supplies
to take back to the farm; then he rented (and finally
bought) a small boat and waited upon the tide. He hired
helpers of all kinds — women, young boys, old men; Ne-
>In T h e C r a y o n , II, 3 Oct. 1855, p. 207
34
groes and white; by the day, the month, or the year; free
men and indentured servants — but he could keep none
of them very long. He made some extra money by charging
a 25c admission fee to see his painting the Danaë, but he
did not do so well in business when he imported ribbon
and Holland gin.
Adolph Ulric Wertmüller was born 18 February, 1751,
sixth of the nine children of a prosperous apothecary in
Stockholm. At the age of fourteen he began the study of
drawing and sculpture under P. H. Larcheveque. He won
some recogniton, but because he saw only a meager future
in sculpture he abandoned it in 1771 in favor of painting.
After working for a time with Lorentz Pasch the Younger
at the Art Academy in Stockholm he went in 1772 to Paris,
supported by his father and aided by Alexander Roslin, a
cousin, who had won an established position as a portraitist
in the French capital. He studied with J. M. Vien, and by
1773 had won entrance as a student in the French Academy,
ranking third in a group of 200. In 1774 he won the
Academy's "second medal." The following year, when M.
Vien went to Rome, Wertmüller got the permission of his
father to follow his teacher. There he made drawings of
antique statues and architectural ruins; he learned per­spective
and executed some large paintings. For some three
years gifts and loans kept coming from Stockholm, until
at last he got a letter from his father enclosing 1200 livres
with which he might travel where he pleased, but also
including the announcement that this would be his final
allotment. After all, there were several other children.
The traveling artist soon spent the 1200 livres. He took
a month in Naples and Pompeii, and shorter periods view­ing
the wonders of Florence and Padua. He reached Bologna
just after the great earthquake. In Padua he tried to earn
money by portrait painting as Roslin had done some years
earlier, but "There was no longer the wealth there." He
could not resist a month in Venice with its then magnificent
collection of Titian and other greats (Napoleon had not
yet relieved Italy of her treasures). The inevitable result
35
was that by the time he had crossed through Mantua and
Milan to Turin he was out of funds, and had to wait for a
loan from the faithful Roslin before he could proceed. On
1 November, 1779 he arrived in Lyons, and there, after
six months of waiting he began to get commissions. For the
first time he earned money and reputation as an independent
portrait painter. He paid his debts and with a little money
in his pocket returned to Paris in May 1781. Lean months
of struggle followed, and he had to do copy work for Roslin
to eke out his expenses.
Encouragement and opportunity came through Count
Gustav Filip Creutz, the Swedish ambassador, who intro­duced
his work to the monarch, Gustav III. At length
Wertmüller's large painting of Ariadne attracted general
attention and praise, and he could think of exhibiting at
the Royal Academy. He determined that he would have a
better chance to make money as a portrait painter than
as a painter of mythological subjects, hence his exhibit
of August, 1783 included besides the Ariadne portraits of
Baron de Staël and four others. A year later he was made
a member of the Academy. Meantime, King Gustav III
came to Paris, visited Wertmüller, and arranged for him
to paint Marie Antoinette. After many days at the Little
Trianon with the Queen and her children, Wertmüller pro­duced
a portrait 6 ft. wide and 8% ft. high. This should
have clinched both reputation and fortune, but its effect
was just the reverse. New orders did not come. The unhappy
situation was due, thought Wertmüller, to the jealousy of
French artists toward a foreigner only 37 years of age, who
had attained opportunities and distinctions beyond them,
plus the fact that haste to meet an exhibit date led to the
showing of the queen's picture before it was hardened, and
therefore without varnish. In any case, Wertmüller waited
vainly for orders, and spent his time composing the large
Danaë and the Golden Rain, destined to be his most famous
work. Finally he gave up hope, and in 1788 determined
to try his luck in Bordeaux. There he was indeed success­ful,
but in 1790 he left revolutionary France for Madrid,
36
where he thought he had a promise to paint the King and
Queen of Spain. This did not materialize, and after some
months he began to do portraits of nobles and merchants.
Then he moved on to Cadiz and did well among the mer­chant
families there while trying to wait out the Revolu­tion.
In 1794 came a Swedish ship, and the chance to sail to
the New World with an adventuresome young Swedish
friend, Henrik Gahn. After an easy but slow voyage of
65 days, the two Swedes landed in Philadelphia, and they
found America so pleasant that they let the vessel return
without them. Gahn established himself as a merchant in
New York, and a few years : later became Swedish consul
there. For Wertmüller, Philadelphia remained the center
of activities, though he traveled about, visiting New York
and going farther "80 miles up country." He found it dif­ficult
to get commissions in young America, but he did
portraits of some of the leaders in Philadelphia, most notable
being that of Washington — an interpretation emphasizing
the aristocratic mien more than was popular at the time,
and portraying the force of the President's personality more
than did Gilbert Stuart. Rembrandt Peale said that it was
"a highly elaborated painting, but dark in the coloring,
and had a German aspect."2
This was the painting which served as the basis for the
engraving made by H. B. Hall for Irving's Life of
Washington.
Despite the meager demand for his talents, Wertmüller
decided to stay in America, a good reason being that the
45-year-old bachelor had fallen in love. The girl was Eliza­beth
Henderson, about eleven years younger than he, grand­daughter
of Gustaf Hesselius, a Swedish artist who had
come to Philadelphia in.1710. Wertmüller had taken a room
at 20 North 9th St. (later Cherry St.), the home of "Betzy"
or "Eliza" and her widowed mother, and romance had
quickly blossomed. Early in 1796 Mrs. Henderson died, and
a little later Wertmüller accompanied Eliza on a trip to
' Crayon, II, 207
37
Baltimore and Annapolis, possibly to be introduced to
others of the Hesselius family who lived in that region.
He came to know well Pastor Nicolas Collin of the "Old
Swedes" church in Philadelphia, and many others of the
substantial Swedish colony there.3
But marriage planning was interrupted by a letter from
Paris announcing the death of Wertmüller's financial agent,
J. H. Wretman. Unable to arrange his affairs by correspond­ence,
Wertmüller had to leave his fiancee and journey to
Europe. Six weeks at sea "through frightful storms" brought
him to Belle Isle, whence a month later he reached Paris
just before Christmas, 1796. Hopes of returning to America
in 1797 were frustrated by the chaos in France and the
fact that Wretman's son and heir was then living in Stock­holm.
Hence, after a few months in Paris, Wertmüller
traveled to Sweden and saw his family for the first time
in 25 years.4
Records are scarce for the two years the artist spent
in Sweden, but it is clear that his host of relatives impor­tuned
him to stay, and he may have been tempted by the
professorship at the Art Academy which was offered him
in the spring of 1799. He was kept busy painting portraits
of the family and others. Father, mother, and oldest brother
had died, but there were still two brothers and five sisters.
His next younger brother Carl, with whom he carried on
a lively correspondence both before and after his visit, was
a doctor. The youngest brother was an officer long stationed
in Finland, and evidently an alcoholic. All of the five sisters
had married, and there were a number of nieces and
nephews. One of the elder sisters, Louisa, was childless,
8 There are a number of references to the Wertmüllers in Amandus John­son's
J o u r n a l a n d B i o g r a p h y of N i c h o l a s C o l l i n (Philadelphia, 1936). Collin
was the last of the ministers sent out from Sweden to shepherd the flock
which established New Sweden in 1638.
4 At this point ends the "Fragment av självebiografi" on which most of
the preceding biographical detail is based. This ms. of 28 pages, in Swedish,
is in the A . U. Wertmüller Samling, Handskriftsmagazinet, Kunglig Bibleotek,
Stockholm. It was probably written during Wertmüller's period in Sweden,
1797-1799. Somewhat more detailed about his relations with Gahn and the
Hendersons is his J o u r n a l commencé e n A m e r i q u e , 1796, but this account
never got beyond the " c o m m e n c e " stage (also in the collection in Kunglig
Bibliotek).
38
but lived in a great house in Stockholm as the wife of a
prominent merchant, Nicolaus Pauli.5
However great the temptation may have been to remain
in Stockholm, the attraction of Philadelphia was stronger.
Wertmüller had gone home really only to settle his finances
so that he could return and live comfortably in America.
He estimated that 60% of his funds had been lost on ac­count
of the French Revolution, but he collected the rest
from the young Wretman. Then he turned over the money
to his brother-in-law Pauli, who agreed to repay him in
Hamburg as Wertmüller passed through.
The journey to America started in the early autumn of
1799, but before the artist reached Hamburg tragedy struck:
The great Pauli had speculated and spent too heavily, and
went bankrupt. Many of the family lost heavily, but Adolf
was hit the hardest. All that he had salvaged of his life's
earnings had been lent to Pauli. Not only were his savings
lost, but even more disastrous seemed the blow to his oft-strained
faith in human beings. His own brother-in-law
had borrowed the funds in his last days of solvency, when
he knew he was failing. Adolf Wertmüller was both des­perate
and bitter. He spent the winter in Hamburg trying
to recover what he could, and to decide how to readjust
his life. But the times were chaotic, he was 48, and his
eyesight was weakening. The bankruptcy paid off 20%, and
eventually some of Pauli's relatives offered to pay an addi­tional
10% against renunciation of any further claim. Adolph
and several other creditors angrily rejected such terms.6
It was with sorrow and bitterness in his heart that
Wertmüller at last left Hamburg in the spring of 1800,
traveled to Paris for a brief stay, then back to Amsterdam
for a boat to America. English capture was avoided by
sailing north around the British Isles, and the trip to
Philadelphia was safely concluded in early November.
= G. A. Granström, Några A n t e c k n i n g a r o m F a m i l j e n Wertmüller (Stock­holm,
1919), esp. 85-163.
0 Granström, 109-116 and passim; AUW to Louisa Pauli, 15 June, 1801, to
Carl W-, 14 May and 15 June, 1801 (A. U. Wertmüller Samling, Kunglig Bib­liotek,
Stockholm).
39
Two months later, on 8 January, 1801, Eliza Henderson
and Adolf Wertmüller were married by Pastor Collin, much
to the surprise of his family when he finally wrote them
of the event three months afterward.7
As early as 1796 Wertmüller had written "much and
continuingly I like this country in relation to the liberty
I have enjoyed, and the tranquillity."8 Hence it was natural
that he worked to prepare himself for American citizenship,
and took the oath on 17 May, 1802.
A new life had begun, and the newness was but empha­sized
when the Wertmüllers pooled their resources and
bought a 145-acre farm. At the end of April, 1803, they
moved by boat down the Delaware River to their new
estate about 20 miles from Philadelphia, at the mouth of
Naaman's Creek (or Naaman's Kill). In this region 150
years before Wertmüller the Swedish and Finnish colonists
had first met the Indians in the wilderness; 150 years after
Wertmüller the land itself was obliterated by railroads and
industries; but in 1803 it was a countryside where farmers
struggled with nature, before either steamboats or railroads,
had been invented. Adolf Wertmüller called his eight years
here the happiest of his life, shortly before he died on 5
October, 1811 (his wife died but three months afterwards,
19 January, 1812). The crude testimony of the diary never­theless
confirms the comment on the artist's passing made
in the Burial Records of the Old Swedes Church:
The necessary improvements (on the farm) required
not only great expense and solicitude, but often greater
bodily fatigue than a person unused to it could bear,
as in this country truly labourers are not only scarce,
but very expensive.9
In these later years Wertmüller did rather little painting,
largely because of trouble with a swelling in his right eye.
He farmed, managed the two rented houses of his wife in
Philadelphia, and made at least one trip (in 1809) to Pitts­burgh
to inspect Eliza's western lands (one tract of 300
7 To Sofie Knös, a niece, 4 April, 1801, Granström, op. clt. 213-214.
8 "Journal commencé en Amerique," loc. cit.
• Copy in the files of the American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia.
40
acres and three smaller tracts). He also attempted a few
financial and importing ventures. But his surest cash income
continued to come from his occasional painting and the
fees he collected for the exhibit of the Danaë.
The diary of his farming experiences, 1803-1811, consti­tutes
the largest single piece of Wertmüller's writing. From
a linguistic point of view the document is peculiar and often
confused, for here a Swede is writing in French about
experience in America. His conversational French, which
he had used for thirty years, was doubtless satisfactory, and
his letters read fairly smoothly. But in the diary he dis­regards
all rules of syntactical agreement. He allows sen­tences
to flow on for half a page only to break down without
being completed. Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation
are equally bad. More interesting is the way he macaronizes
French, English, and Swedish. To the reader of the original
it soon becomes obvious that during his years in France he
had no contact with the soil or with the practical matters
he is here writing about. His vocabulary is inadequate for
discussion of the repair of a levee or the planting of crops.
The deficiency does not, however, seem to bother him. With
an indiscriminate blend of an artist's French and a farmer's
English, flavored with reminiscent Swedish, he gets along
very nicely.
But the results are odd. He tosses in American "buck­wheat"
spelled "Buckwith." He creates a French word
braguer from the Swedish brak (English bracken). He tells
of making for his cows " U n e espece de Raque ou ratiere."
His wife has " 7 poules qui etoient couché Sur des oeuf."
Of himself and his German hands he says " n o u s avons com­mencé
a rompu les boeufs." In speaking of " L a recolte des
C o r n S t o c k " he calls the stalks "batons garnies des feuilles
et pointes e t c " Farm hands work " a v e c L a spede et how."
Strangely enough the Journal is, on the whole, quite com­prehensible
despite the defiance of the rules. Being a tale
of ordinary things the meaning is clear, and therefore the
translation can be offered with a minimum of references to
the peculiarities.
41
This diary is no great thing in itself; but it is one piece
in the great mosaic of early American life. It is earthy and
realistic in the ordinary sense of the terms. It is not Stein­beckian
realism, it is not psychological interpretation, it is
not even a practical analysis of the problems of farming. It
is a simple thing, and its value lies in its simplicity and its
transparent honesty. Its value is enhanced by the scarcity
of this type of material for the period represented. It tells
of the little things of everyday life. It is not quite typical—
for instance, it is unlikely that a native American farmer
often had quite as much labor trouble as did this Swedish-born,
European-trained artist who married at 49 and at 52
took in his hands the spade instead of the brush. But just
because of this we get here a more poignant picture of the
problems of the farmer.10
1 0 The Wertmüller Samling in Kunglig Bibliotek includes the manuscripts
already named a number of letters, account books, and a complete record of
all the paintings AUW completed, and the prices received for all those sold.
Wertmüller is referred to briefly in many of the dictionaries and histories of
art: A l l g e m e i n e s L e x i k o n d e r B i l d e n d e n Künstler . . . , X X X V (Leipzig,
1942), 431-432; Charles de Peloux, Répertoire b i o g r a p h i q u e e t b i b l i o g r a p h i q u e
d e s a r t i s t e s d u X V I I I e siècle français (Paris, 1930), 157, 304; , C . H. Hart, " L i f e
Portraits of General Washington," MacClure's M a g a z i n e , VIII (Feb. 1897),
304; J. J . Foster, A D i c t i o n a r y of P a i n t e r s o f M i n i a t u r e s (London, 1926),
Mantle Fielding, D i c t i o n a r y o f A m e r i c a n P a i n t e r s (Philadelphia, [1926]), etc.
He is of course mentioned in such volumes as Adolph B. Benson and Naboth
Hedin, S w e d e s i n A m e r i c a , 1 6 3 8 - 1 9 3 8 (New Haven, 1938) esp. pp. 490-491.
Most thorough account to date is that by Axel Gauffin in Ord och Bild, XXVII
(1918), pp. 65-80, but this is concerned chiefly with the artist's European
career. Very few of Wertmüller's own letters survive, probably because he
asked that they be destroyed; an interesting group of letters to h im was pub­lished
by Ernst E. Areen, G u s t a v i a n s k a Konstnärsbref: C. F . S u n d v a l l t i ll
A . U. Wertmüller (Stockholm, 1916).
In the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia are two type­script
accounts: Henry C. Conrad, " A Sketch of Adolph Ulric Wertmüller,"
read before the Historical Society of Delaware . . . April 19, 1897; and a more
pretentious account by Fredrick H. Shelton, "Adolph Ulric Wertmüller, Por­trait
Painter . . ." prepared for the Swedish Colonial Society, Philadelphia,
March, 1920.
The pages that follow are merely the first part of the total diary, which
runs to 137 MS pages, and which will be published in a few months with a
more complete biographical sketch, by the Swedish Pioneer Historical Society.
42
[Notes on Diary at end—after p. 32 bis.]
Journal of the land located on Naaman's Creek begun at
the time that I left Philadelphia when I bought there the
said land and continued during the following years, etc. . . .
ADOLPH ULRIC WERTMÜLLER,
1803—
1803 April 28, 1803, I bought from Mr. John Warder
April 28 and son, as adminstrators of mortgaged land, the
title to the land located near Naaman's Creek for
the sum of $5800 cash which I paid to Mr. John
Warder as balance and complete payment for the
aforesaid land, on condition that he have the
right to move away two stacks of hay, the frame­work
of an open shed for horses or carriages,
etc. (in pieces), a small summer house or latticed
pavilion, a portable iron fireplace, and an iron
support for the pots, etc. in the kitchen fireplace.
I received from Mr. John Warder all the papers
concerning the land at the moment that I paid him
the money mentioned above.
After I had bought the land, my first occupation
was to find a boat to carry our possessions and us
to the land. I had the good fortune to find, for ten
dollars, the same day that I acquired the land, a
large boat, which carried wood to Philadelphia,
and we set our time of departure for the next
morning.
April 29 April 29, in the morning at the break of day, we
got up and began to prepare our possessions. Only
one cart came and we lost much time waiting for
the other two carts which failed to appear. At
eight o'clock when the carts had not come, I went
at once and finally, after much trouble, I found
three others; then we sent our possessions off to
the boat at full speed.2 Although we had been at
'work packing for weeks in advance, we had just
finished packing the quantity of objects which we
43
had with us — not just furniture but boxes with
my books, paints, paintings, utensils, etc. for paint­ing,
plaster works, etc. Finally, at eleven o'clock,
all was loaded on the boat. This delay made us
miss a part of the outgoing tide3 on the river,
which had already begun at eight o'clock in the
morning, but fortunately for us, we had a favor­able
wind. We left Philadelphia extremely tired,
but delighted with our acquisition and with the
good fortune of coming to live in the country.
We were however prepared to have some diffi­culties
in the beginning — in view of the fact
that neither of us was accustomed to living in
the country and in addition to that we were per­fectly
ignorant in all that concerns agriculture.
As soon as we were a little distance from the city,
we made a fire and began to make coffee for
lunch, for I had not had the time to take the
least thing to refresh myself during the whole
morning. (Charlotte, who was married to Abra­ham
Wriet, was with us then and she had with her
her husband's daughter, aged about 8 yrs.) After
having eaten lunch, we saw with pleasure that
we were going along well, that the wind continued
to be good. We dined the best we could and after
that we awaited patiently our arrival at Naaman's
Creek. We arrived at seven o'clock in the evening
at the mouth of Naaman's Creek (a small river
emptying into the large river, the Delaware)
and after some consultations and difficulties on
the part of the Captain, we finally decided to
try to go up the creek with the large boat. After
some trouble, we arrived near the mill at the end
of the day after sunset, and there we tied up
the boat at the small landing which is there along­side
the land which I bought, near the mill be­longing
to Mr. Perquin [Perkins]. Evening and
darkness having fallen, we decided to leave our
44
possessions on the boat until the next morning.
My wife had got off the boat at the mouth of the
creek and with Charlotte, Eliza, the daughter of
her husband and our little bound servant, Re­becca,
had gone across the plain to the house
on our land, where she entered through the
window. She found the house so stinking that
she had difficulty in staying there, and they
gathered up old pieces of wood around the house
and began to make a fire to purify the air. It
was impossible to go down into the cellar, for
the smell given off by putrid water, which had
remained nearly a year in the cellar and which
half filled it, stopped them. After that, they scrub­bed
the house. The Captain, his man and I ar­rived
at the house with William, who lived on
the other side of the road in the log house belong­ing
to the land. I had a letter asking him to give
me the key to the house, which he did, and he
then accompanied me to the boat before we went
up the creek and boarded the boat at the mouth
of the creek to show us the way (so that we would
not hit a rock which was on our side of the
creek) and to show us the landing, which he did.
When we arrived at the house, we found it well
cleaned, a fire made,21 and a little to eat and drink
from our provisions. They drank to our health and
happiness on the place, then we decided to return
to the boat to sleep, since the odor of the house
prevented our remaining there without risk of
being sick.
April 30 We passed the night on the boat and the next
morning we returned to the house to stay there.
We carried with us all that we could. They began
already at the break of day to unload all the
large pieces that we had on the boat and by work­ing
hard they succeeded in unloading everything
during the morning. I rented from Mr. Chelly
45
(a neighbor) an oxcart which, with the aid of
three men, carried all my possessions to the house
during the day.
May 2 As soon as our possessions were in the house and
the boat was gone from the creek (which was
done the same day — the next day it left the
mouth of the creek) we began to install ourselves
and to work in the garden. We hired for that pur­pose
two men, Patrick and William, and at the
end of a week we had finished planting the princi­pal
part of our garden. During another week the
two men dug a round hole to drain off the water
in the cellar, and then they repaired the gates.
May 6 During all this business and work I left for New­castle,
May 6, to have the deed to my land re­corded
and I returned the same day to Naaman's
Creek.
May 8 After having had great difficulty in finding a hired
girl, we found one named Rebecca, who was-an
excellent girl for the work and who helped us
considerably in putting in order all things on the
farm in such a way that everything went to the
satisfaction of my wife and we were extremely
content with the girl.
May 9 For twenty dollars I bought a brown cow about
ten years old from Mr. Philips, a neighbor near
the river a mile away from me. At the same time,
I bought three small suckling pigs for our farm,
and we bought several hens and small pullets
from the new Rebecca Bradford.
May 14 Since that time, we have worked in the garden,
etc., until May 14, and then I bought six hens
from Mr. Brown.
May 16 I bought from Mr. Philips two other cows with a
calf, of which one [cow] twelve years old, had
only one eye and was due to have a calf in two
months and the other, not more than six years
46
old, had a calf eight days old. All three cows
which I bought are very good, giving much milk.
May 17 On May 17, I returned to Newcastle to get the
deed. I had to stay a long time waiting for them
to copy it in the records and could not get it
until five o'clock in the evening. After that, I
got all possible information concerning the can­celing
of and the acknowledging of payment of
the debt owed by Mr. Lee Coffre to Mr. William
Connel, but, although I paid Mr. Read, a lawyer,
four dollars, I could obtain no information other
than that I should look for that man in the state
of Pennsylvania. When my business was finished,
I returned the same day to Naaman's Creek.
May 21 I hired William to work in the garden for two
days.
May 22. This day I bought from Mr. Philips a rooster and
some pullets and then we began to have some
eggs and a hen with chickens.
May 24 I received a plow which I had ordered. This plow
was very poorly made with a poor point4 and poor
wood badly finished, in such a way that I was
very much dissatisfied that Patrick had recom­mended
such a poor workman to me. This plow
was a light plow for one or two horses.
June 1 I left for Philadelphia. There I acquired several
things indeed useful for working the land, and at
the same time I received for the purpose of family
and farm expenses some money which I took back
with me. Captain Lee, one of my acquaintances in
Philadelphia, had had an old boat repaired and
had intended it for me at the price of thirty-one
dollars with sails and oars (two pairs), etc. I
could not do otherwise than to take it from him
at this price on the condition that I should not
pay until after several months, in view of the fact
that it was impossible for me to pay it before be-
47
cause of the great need I had of money in the
country to make my land pay, etc. As soon as I
was ready to leave, I invited Miss Sophia (the
sister-in-law of Dr. Collin, rector of the Swedish
congregation in Philadelphia) as well as Mr.
Spindler, who had expressed the desire to come
to see my land, to come with me in the boat,
which Captain Lee had promised to navigate
himself as far as my land. He had said that I could
take in the boat with me all that I wanted and he
would take care of it. In consequence, I bought
some scythes, their handles, some scrapers [gra­toires]
etc. and I set the day of departure for my
land for June 15.1 had all that I had bought car­ried
on carts to the house of Captain Lee, and
he had the kindness to carry it to the boat. This
gave him a great deal of trouble and tired him
to such an extent that he complained to his wife
and found it very bad that I had given him so
much trouble, while he had really brought that
upon himself in offering to do everything. Finally,
all was loaded on the boat with the exception
of three pretty pots of flowers which Captain
Lee absolutely did not want to take. So they
stayed there and were lost. At the moment of
departure, Charlotte, who at the arrival of Re­becca
(the big one) had returned to her husband,
wanted to return with me to my land. I had,
during my stay in Philadelphia, contracted for
the service of the son of Charlotte's husband for
fourteen years. He came with his father to the
mayor of Philadelphia and signed his contract
himself at the age of six years and six months,
which infinitely surprised the mayor and me.
In consequence, the young man, Charlotte, Miss
Sophia, Mr. Spindler, and Captain Lee were too
many to leave together in so small a boat. Captain
Lee went then to find a friend not far away from
the boat, and that friend showed him not far from
48
there another boat to take. We all embarked in
my boat and we were soon near the other, after
which Captain Lee distributed us, the little boy,
Mr. Spindler, and me in the big boat and Captain
Lee and Miss Sophia in the one which I had
bought from him and in which were all my effects,
and we continued on our way rowing along the
river. After some time, Mr. Spindler, who was
with me, began to drink a bottle of [ ]5
and one of wine one after the other. In spite of all
my pleading he did not want to stop. He began
to get drunk. After a few moments then he began
to want to catch up with the other boat and to
row so strongly that I was obliged to ask him
to stop, but he [ ]6 and swore and did
not want to. It was then that I became angry.
After I had done, without avail, all that was in
my power to steer the boat smoothly while dis­puting
with him, Captain Lee and Miss Sophia,
seeing my difficulty, approached. Miss Sophia
suggested coming into the boat where I was with
Mr. Spindler, and I accepted her proposal at once.
She came and took the rudder in such a way
that I was much relieved, for she steered so well
that in spite of all the trouble that Mr. Spindler
gave himself, he could not turn the boat from its
course, and all he got out of it was tired hands
and an argument with everybody. Finally, after
much difficulty, we could get no farther than Huc
[Marcus Hook] a small port two miles distant
from my land, a little upstream. The outgoing
tide8 having stopped, we were obliged to stay
there until it started running again. We ate a little
and drank to refresh ourselves and so that Mssrs.
Lee and Spindler could rest after their hard work,
for they were obliged to walk in the mud to pull
the boat to land. Miss Sophia and Charlotte, as
well as I myself, went on foot as far as the road
which goes to Marcus Hook. Miss Sophia then
49
decided to go with Charlotte to my land, and I
walked to Marcus Hook to find the boat again at
the rendezvous where it was. Captain Lee had
left the large boat at the place where we de­barked,
and we all three came in my boat. With
much difficulty, late in the evening after darkness
had fallen, we arrived at my land, extremely
tired and with Captain Lee in a bad humor from
having undergone so much, and making me un­derstand
that I was the cause of it. This made,
me feel very bad. We ate supper right away and
went to bed tired out.
Mr. Spindler, after coming into the house, became
very polite, and his bad humor passed entirely.
My wife had, the tenth of June during my absence,
bought three and one half bushels of potatoes
from Mr. Philips, who with his [ques] put them in
the ground. He worked with one of his horses since
I had but one which I had brought from Phila­delphia
with me. He tried that one hitched to the
plow, and it pulled with the other horse reason­ably
well for the first time.
June 16 I paid William for a day and a half of work. The
next day Captain Lee and Mr. Spindler went back
to get their boat at Marcus Hook and returned
by the river to Philadelphia. Miss Sophia re­mained
here until the third day after her ar­rival
and returned to Philadelphia.
June 17 Early in the morning we discovered that during
the night our cow (the bay) with one eye had
had a heifer calf which we decided to raise.
June 25 I bought from Mr. Philips two other small pigs
of the same age as the first ones that I bought
from him.
June 26 After working for seven weeks, Rebecca Brad­ford
left my house. She was very impertinent.
First she said that she was promised for six weeks
50
as a nurse for a woman in childbed and that
she was obliged to leave us during that time,
but that she intended to return. However, after
some remark that my wife made to her she re­newed
her impertinences and threatened my wife
with leaving the house, to which my wife con­sented
at once. She gave my wife a week to look
for a girl, but it was impossible to find one. In
consequence, on the day set (a Sunday) she
wanted to leave in the evening, saying that she
wanted to find a girl for my wife, but my wife
not being able to rely on her good faith wanted
to go herself to try to find one. Rebecca Bradford
wanted to stop her from doing that and to stay
until night. In this way, my wife was obliged to
leave and she departed at once. At eight o'clock
at night my wife returned. She had hired a mu­latto
woman named Molly, who was a good worker
in the hay and with other things in the garden.
June 30 I left on horseback in the company of Mr. Adam
Williamson to go to a public sale where I bought
a plow, a big rake (a harrow), a white horse, and
several other things on three months' credit. Mr.
Adam Williamson signed my note and I signed
his; he had also bought several small things. We
returned together, and I left the horse there until
two days later, and then, when Mr. A . Williamson
went to get his things, he brought the horse back
for me. It was nine or ten years old.
The same day, the 30th of June, I began to have
the clover in the field on the other side of the
road, as well as that on the side of the garden
cut by two Negroes and a mulatto who mowed
very fast. After having worked two days they
could not continue, because they had promised
to work somewhere else. I had much trouble with
the hay. An Irishman, William (Warder's man),
who lived in the log house on the other side of
51
the road, had promised to come to cut the clover
before I talked to the Negroes, but had gone back
on his word to me, because I got the two Negroes,
who worked for less than I had agreed to give
him, that is 75 cents a day with a pint of brandy
and their meals.9 This had displeased him. He
and Patrick thought that they could lead me
around as they wished and fleece me of my money,
but they were wrong. Seeing their obstinacy and
their laziness, I no longer wanted either one or
the other to work for me.
July 4 I hired Samuel Aston, a man whom Mr. Philips
recommended to me as in his prime for work on
a farm and a good farmer, for one month at
twelve dollars a month, with the understanding
that he should continue winter and summer for
the same price. He was very reluctant to come
to work for me and set his price very high. He
was supposed to come ten days before he came,
but he delayed until July 4th10 and I put off from
day to day the cutting of the hay until June 30,
which made the clover dry up in such a manner
that I had only two-thirds of what I would have
had if the clover had been cut on time.
July 11 I sent Samuel to get the horses shod to be ready
to bring in the hay which was beginning to dry
up too much, but not having any cart at all, I
could not do it. The one which Mr. Derik was to
make for me was not finished, so that it was
necessary to wait patiently. Finally, it was fin­ished,
and I was to go to get it as soon as the time
would permit me.
July 16 Having decided to sow some buckwheat and not
having time to go to Philadelphia myself, I asked
Mr. John Chelly, my neighbor, to buy, when he
went to the market in the said city, a bushel of
clover seed and a half-bushel of timothy11 seed
52
to sow with the buckwheat. This he did and
brought me good grain.
July 18 From the 15th to the 18th of July, I had the hay
brought in and I went at that time to get the
cart for the purpose. I brought the hay in with
my own horses (that is that which was cut in
the first field) and put it into four stacks. The
clover was brought in before and put into the
barn or above the stable.
NOTES ON THE DIARY:
1. The text reads: comme e x e c u t e u r [de] fond h i p o t h e ­qué,
which is not perfectly clear in meaning. It is one of the
many cases where the English rendering must settle for the
reasonable rather than the precise translation.
2. Here the writer says a toute force when obviously he
means à, toute v i t e s s e.
3. In several places Wertmüller uses words for tide
exactly the reverse of what he must intend to say; here
he says flu, but should have said reflux, for with Naaman's
Creek being downstream nothing else would make sense.
4. Fin means a number of things, including the point
of a joke; its translation here as the point of a plow is
justified only on the grounds of necessity and that Wert­müller's
imperfect knowledge of French led him to many
such odd usages.
5. The significant word is illegible; hereafter a vacant
space with no further notation will indicate an indecipher­able
word.
6. Pista; untranslatable.
7. Since Huc because of its location must mean Marcus
Hook it will be so translated hereafter. The little community
here was still often called Finland after its original settlers,
and sometimes the term Finland was applied to the region
between Marcus Hook and Naaman's Creek.
8. See note 3.
9. This sentence had been worked over, and because of
the bracketed and illegible words, and the absence of a
main verb, translation required that considerable liberties
be taken; the above seems to be the sense of the passage.
10. This and some of the other dates on this page of
the MS are not perfectly clear.
53
11. Text reads: (timoti ou) L u j e r n e .
12. Here the name is given as Tranne, probably because
Wertmüller had not yet learned how to spell it; later entries
use Travanne or de Travanne.
13. Text reads: trouk ou t u y e a u de 8 lance.
14. Text says bang, which is evidently the English bank
used in the sense of embankment or levee; later Wert­müller
spells it variously banq, banc, and finally bank.
15. The subject is omitted; passage reads: etroyant que
son augmanta.
18. Although the name has not previously appeared it
is probably that Absalon is the "fils du m a r y de Charlotte"
mentioned in the entry of 15 June, 1803. Cf. entries for 8
October, 1803, and 25 February, 1804.
17. The word is tour, but the context gives no guidance
as to what this broad-purpose word may signify here —
it could mean windlass, cider-press, bread board, or any
one of several other things.
18. Nov. 26 and 24 are thus reversed in the text.
19. Here the word is reflu, although the context implies
flood tide. Cf. note 3.
20. Wertmüller consistently uses the contemporary spell­ing
Racoon or Racoon's; since it has become Raccoon this
spelling will be used in the translation.
21. This is evidently Capt. Felix Fisler. See Amandus
Johnson, The Journal and Biography of Nicholas Collin
(Philadelphia, 1936), p. 38.
22. In Sweden the traveler had the established right to
food and assistance from dwellers along the highway. Hence
this little incident illustrates a bit of the "culture conflict"
that created frequent misunderstandings in the diverse
American society.
54

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WERTMÜLLER'S DIARY:
The Transformation of Artist into Farmer
Edited and Translated by FRANKLIN D. SCOTT
With the Assistance of ROSAMOND PORTER
The story of how a talented artist of Paris and the salons
of Europe ended as a farmer on the Delaware, carrying
mud and arguing with servants, is one of many thousands
of the unknown sagas of America.
He was Adolf Ulric Wertmüller, First Painter to the
King of Sweden, member of the French Academy, an artist
of considerable skill. He painted both George Washington
and Marie Antoinette, and other notables of America,
France, and Spain. Perhaps he prized most highly his great
classical canvases of Ariadne and of Danaë and The Golden
Rain, but his friend Rembrandt Peale wrote of him after
his death:
He was chiefly employed in small portraits, for which
he was better calculated, being near sighted; in these
his high finishing was better appreciated. His Danaë
was admired by the few persons in Philadelphia that
talked about painting; but nobody thought about pur­chasing
it, partly repelled by the subject, which was
repellent to their Quaker sentiments, and by the high
price put upon it, as his 'masterpiece' — having, with
unmeasured time, lavished on it all the resources of
his art.1
In the last decade of his life this proud painter migrated
to America, married, and became a farmer along the Dela­ware.
From the river bank he carried shovelfulls of mud
to fertilize the fields for grain. He made his 20-mile trips
to Philadelphia by horseback, except when he had supplies
to take back to the farm; then he rented (and finally
bought) a small boat and waited upon the tide. He hired
helpers of all kinds — women, young boys, old men; Ne-
>In T h e C r a y o n , II, 3 Oct. 1855, p. 207
34
groes and white; by the day, the month, or the year; free
men and indentured servants — but he could keep none
of them very long. He made some extra money by charging
a 25c admission fee to see his painting the Danaë, but he
did not do so well in business when he imported ribbon
and Holland gin.
Adolph Ulric Wertmüller was born 18 February, 1751,
sixth of the nine children of a prosperous apothecary in
Stockholm. At the age of fourteen he began the study of
drawing and sculpture under P. H. Larcheveque. He won
some recogniton, but because he saw only a meager future
in sculpture he abandoned it in 1771 in favor of painting.
After working for a time with Lorentz Pasch the Younger
at the Art Academy in Stockholm he went in 1772 to Paris,
supported by his father and aided by Alexander Roslin, a
cousin, who had won an established position as a portraitist
in the French capital. He studied with J. M. Vien, and by
1773 had won entrance as a student in the French Academy,
ranking third in a group of 200. In 1774 he won the
Academy's "second medal." The following year, when M.
Vien went to Rome, Wertmüller got the permission of his
father to follow his teacher. There he made drawings of
antique statues and architectural ruins; he learned per­spective
and executed some large paintings. For some three
years gifts and loans kept coming from Stockholm, until
at last he got a letter from his father enclosing 1200 livres
with which he might travel where he pleased, but also
including the announcement that this would be his final
allotment. After all, there were several other children.
The traveling artist soon spent the 1200 livres. He took
a month in Naples and Pompeii, and shorter periods view­ing
the wonders of Florence and Padua. He reached Bologna
just after the great earthquake. In Padua he tried to earn
money by portrait painting as Roslin had done some years
earlier, but "There was no longer the wealth there." He
could not resist a month in Venice with its then magnificent
collection of Titian and other greats (Napoleon had not
yet relieved Italy of her treasures). The inevitable result
35
was that by the time he had crossed through Mantua and
Milan to Turin he was out of funds, and had to wait for a
loan from the faithful Roslin before he could proceed. On
1 November, 1779 he arrived in Lyons, and there, after
six months of waiting he began to get commissions. For the
first time he earned money and reputation as an independent
portrait painter. He paid his debts and with a little money
in his pocket returned to Paris in May 1781. Lean months
of struggle followed, and he had to do copy work for Roslin
to eke out his expenses.
Encouragement and opportunity came through Count
Gustav Filip Creutz, the Swedish ambassador, who intro­duced
his work to the monarch, Gustav III. At length
Wertmüller's large painting of Ariadne attracted general
attention and praise, and he could think of exhibiting at
the Royal Academy. He determined that he would have a
better chance to make money as a portrait painter than
as a painter of mythological subjects, hence his exhibit
of August, 1783 included besides the Ariadne portraits of
Baron de Staël and four others. A year later he was made
a member of the Academy. Meantime, King Gustav III
came to Paris, visited Wertmüller, and arranged for him
to paint Marie Antoinette. After many days at the Little
Trianon with the Queen and her children, Wertmüller pro­duced
a portrait 6 ft. wide and 8% ft. high. This should
have clinched both reputation and fortune, but its effect
was just the reverse. New orders did not come. The unhappy
situation was due, thought Wertmüller, to the jealousy of
French artists toward a foreigner only 37 years of age, who
had attained opportunities and distinctions beyond them,
plus the fact that haste to meet an exhibit date led to the
showing of the queen's picture before it was hardened, and
therefore without varnish. In any case, Wertmüller waited
vainly for orders, and spent his time composing the large
Danaë and the Golden Rain, destined to be his most famous
work. Finally he gave up hope, and in 1788 determined
to try his luck in Bordeaux. There he was indeed success­ful,
but in 1790 he left revolutionary France for Madrid,
36
where he thought he had a promise to paint the King and
Queen of Spain. This did not materialize, and after some
months he began to do portraits of nobles and merchants.
Then he moved on to Cadiz and did well among the mer­chant
families there while trying to wait out the Revolu­tion.
In 1794 came a Swedish ship, and the chance to sail to
the New World with an adventuresome young Swedish
friend, Henrik Gahn. After an easy but slow voyage of
65 days, the two Swedes landed in Philadelphia, and they
found America so pleasant that they let the vessel return
without them. Gahn established himself as a merchant in
New York, and a few years : later became Swedish consul
there. For Wertmüller, Philadelphia remained the center
of activities, though he traveled about, visiting New York
and going farther "80 miles up country." He found it dif­ficult
to get commissions in young America, but he did
portraits of some of the leaders in Philadelphia, most notable
being that of Washington — an interpretation emphasizing
the aristocratic mien more than was popular at the time,
and portraying the force of the President's personality more
than did Gilbert Stuart. Rembrandt Peale said that it was
"a highly elaborated painting, but dark in the coloring,
and had a German aspect."2
This was the painting which served as the basis for the
engraving made by H. B. Hall for Irving's Life of
Washington.
Despite the meager demand for his talents, Wertmüller
decided to stay in America, a good reason being that the
45-year-old bachelor had fallen in love. The girl was Eliza­beth
Henderson, about eleven years younger than he, grand­daughter
of Gustaf Hesselius, a Swedish artist who had
come to Philadelphia in.1710. Wertmüller had taken a room
at 20 North 9th St. (later Cherry St.), the home of "Betzy"
or "Eliza" and her widowed mother, and romance had
quickly blossomed. Early in 1796 Mrs. Henderson died, and
a little later Wertmüller accompanied Eliza on a trip to
' Crayon, II, 207
37
Baltimore and Annapolis, possibly to be introduced to
others of the Hesselius family who lived in that region.
He came to know well Pastor Nicolas Collin of the "Old
Swedes" church in Philadelphia, and many others of the
substantial Swedish colony there.3
But marriage planning was interrupted by a letter from
Paris announcing the death of Wertmüller's financial agent,
J. H. Wretman. Unable to arrange his affairs by correspond­ence,
Wertmüller had to leave his fiancee and journey to
Europe. Six weeks at sea "through frightful storms" brought
him to Belle Isle, whence a month later he reached Paris
just before Christmas, 1796. Hopes of returning to America
in 1797 were frustrated by the chaos in France and the
fact that Wretman's son and heir was then living in Stock­holm.
Hence, after a few months in Paris, Wertmüller
traveled to Sweden and saw his family for the first time
in 25 years.4
Records are scarce for the two years the artist spent
in Sweden, but it is clear that his host of relatives impor­tuned
him to stay, and he may have been tempted by the
professorship at the Art Academy which was offered him
in the spring of 1799. He was kept busy painting portraits
of the family and others. Father, mother, and oldest brother
had died, but there were still two brothers and five sisters.
His next younger brother Carl, with whom he carried on
a lively correspondence both before and after his visit, was
a doctor. The youngest brother was an officer long stationed
in Finland, and evidently an alcoholic. All of the five sisters
had married, and there were a number of nieces and
nephews. One of the elder sisters, Louisa, was childless,
8 There are a number of references to the Wertmüllers in Amandus John­son's
J o u r n a l a n d B i o g r a p h y of N i c h o l a s C o l l i n (Philadelphia, 1936). Collin
was the last of the ministers sent out from Sweden to shepherd the flock
which established New Sweden in 1638.
4 At this point ends the "Fragment av självebiografi" on which most of
the preceding biographical detail is based. This ms. of 28 pages, in Swedish,
is in the A . U. Wertmüller Samling, Handskriftsmagazinet, Kunglig Bibleotek,
Stockholm. It was probably written during Wertmüller's period in Sweden,
1797-1799. Somewhat more detailed about his relations with Gahn and the
Hendersons is his J o u r n a l commencé e n A m e r i q u e , 1796, but this account
never got beyond the " c o m m e n c e " stage (also in the collection in Kunglig
Bibliotek).
38
but lived in a great house in Stockholm as the wife of a
prominent merchant, Nicolaus Pauli.5
However great the temptation may have been to remain
in Stockholm, the attraction of Philadelphia was stronger.
Wertmüller had gone home really only to settle his finances
so that he could return and live comfortably in America.
He estimated that 60% of his funds had been lost on ac­count
of the French Revolution, but he collected the rest
from the young Wretman. Then he turned over the money
to his brother-in-law Pauli, who agreed to repay him in
Hamburg as Wertmüller passed through.
The journey to America started in the early autumn of
1799, but before the artist reached Hamburg tragedy struck:
The great Pauli had speculated and spent too heavily, and
went bankrupt. Many of the family lost heavily, but Adolf
was hit the hardest. All that he had salvaged of his life's
earnings had been lent to Pauli. Not only were his savings
lost, but even more disastrous seemed the blow to his oft-strained
faith in human beings. His own brother-in-law
had borrowed the funds in his last days of solvency, when
he knew he was failing. Adolf Wertmüller was both des­perate
and bitter. He spent the winter in Hamburg trying
to recover what he could, and to decide how to readjust
his life. But the times were chaotic, he was 48, and his
eyesight was weakening. The bankruptcy paid off 20%, and
eventually some of Pauli's relatives offered to pay an addi­tional
10% against renunciation of any further claim. Adolph
and several other creditors angrily rejected such terms.6
It was with sorrow and bitterness in his heart that
Wertmüller at last left Hamburg in the spring of 1800,
traveled to Paris for a brief stay, then back to Amsterdam
for a boat to America. English capture was avoided by
sailing north around the British Isles, and the trip to
Philadelphia was safely concluded in early November.
= G. A. Granström, Några A n t e c k n i n g a r o m F a m i l j e n Wertmüller (Stock­holm,
1919), esp. 85-163.
0 Granström, 109-116 and passim; AUW to Louisa Pauli, 15 June, 1801, to
Carl W-, 14 May and 15 June, 1801 (A. U. Wertmüller Samling, Kunglig Bib­liotek,
Stockholm).
39
Two months later, on 8 January, 1801, Eliza Henderson
and Adolf Wertmüller were married by Pastor Collin, much
to the surprise of his family when he finally wrote them
of the event three months afterward.7
As early as 1796 Wertmüller had written "much and
continuingly I like this country in relation to the liberty
I have enjoyed, and the tranquillity."8 Hence it was natural
that he worked to prepare himself for American citizenship,
and took the oath on 17 May, 1802.
A new life had begun, and the newness was but empha­sized
when the Wertmüllers pooled their resources and
bought a 145-acre farm. At the end of April, 1803, they
moved by boat down the Delaware River to their new
estate about 20 miles from Philadelphia, at the mouth of
Naaman's Creek (or Naaman's Kill). In this region 150
years before Wertmüller the Swedish and Finnish colonists
had first met the Indians in the wilderness; 150 years after
Wertmüller the land itself was obliterated by railroads and
industries; but in 1803 it was a countryside where farmers
struggled with nature, before either steamboats or railroads,
had been invented. Adolf Wertmüller called his eight years
here the happiest of his life, shortly before he died on 5
October, 1811 (his wife died but three months afterwards,
19 January, 1812). The crude testimony of the diary never­theless
confirms the comment on the artist's passing made
in the Burial Records of the Old Swedes Church:
The necessary improvements (on the farm) required
not only great expense and solicitude, but often greater
bodily fatigue than a person unused to it could bear,
as in this country truly labourers are not only scarce,
but very expensive.9
In these later years Wertmüller did rather little painting,
largely because of trouble with a swelling in his right eye.
He farmed, managed the two rented houses of his wife in
Philadelphia, and made at least one trip (in 1809) to Pitts­burgh
to inspect Eliza's western lands (one tract of 300
7 To Sofie Knös, a niece, 4 April, 1801, Granström, op. clt. 213-214.
8 "Journal commencé en Amerique," loc. cit.
• Copy in the files of the American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia.
40
acres and three smaller tracts). He also attempted a few
financial and importing ventures. But his surest cash income
continued to come from his occasional painting and the
fees he collected for the exhibit of the Danaë.
The diary of his farming experiences, 1803-1811, consti­tutes
the largest single piece of Wertmüller's writing. From
a linguistic point of view the document is peculiar and often
confused, for here a Swede is writing in French about
experience in America. His conversational French, which
he had used for thirty years, was doubtless satisfactory, and
his letters read fairly smoothly. But in the diary he dis­regards
all rules of syntactical agreement. He allows sen­tences
to flow on for half a page only to break down without
being completed. Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation
are equally bad. More interesting is the way he macaronizes
French, English, and Swedish. To the reader of the original
it soon becomes obvious that during his years in France he
had no contact with the soil or with the practical matters
he is here writing about. His vocabulary is inadequate for
discussion of the repair of a levee or the planting of crops.
The deficiency does not, however, seem to bother him. With
an indiscriminate blend of an artist's French and a farmer's
English, flavored with reminiscent Swedish, he gets along
very nicely.
But the results are odd. He tosses in American "buck­wheat"
spelled "Buckwith." He creates a French word
braguer from the Swedish brak (English bracken). He tells
of making for his cows " U n e espece de Raque ou ratiere."
His wife has " 7 poules qui etoient couché Sur des oeuf."
Of himself and his German hands he says " n o u s avons com­mencé
a rompu les boeufs." In speaking of " L a recolte des
C o r n S t o c k " he calls the stalks "batons garnies des feuilles
et pointes e t c " Farm hands work " a v e c L a spede et how."
Strangely enough the Journal is, on the whole, quite com­prehensible
despite the defiance of the rules. Being a tale
of ordinary things the meaning is clear, and therefore the
translation can be offered with a minimum of references to
the peculiarities.
41
This diary is no great thing in itself; but it is one piece
in the great mosaic of early American life. It is earthy and
realistic in the ordinary sense of the terms. It is not Stein­beckian
realism, it is not psychological interpretation, it is
not even a practical analysis of the problems of farming. It
is a simple thing, and its value lies in its simplicity and its
transparent honesty. Its value is enhanced by the scarcity
of this type of material for the period represented. It tells
of the little things of everyday life. It is not quite typical—
for instance, it is unlikely that a native American farmer
often had quite as much labor trouble as did this Swedish-born,
European-trained artist who married at 49 and at 52
took in his hands the spade instead of the brush. But just
because of this we get here a more poignant picture of the
problems of the farmer.10
1 0 The Wertmüller Samling in Kunglig Bibliotek includes the manuscripts
already named a number of letters, account books, and a complete record of
all the paintings AUW completed, and the prices received for all those sold.
Wertmüller is referred to briefly in many of the dictionaries and histories of
art: A l l g e m e i n e s L e x i k o n d e r B i l d e n d e n Künstler . . . , X X X V (Leipzig,
1942), 431-432; Charles de Peloux, Répertoire b i o g r a p h i q u e e t b i b l i o g r a p h i q u e
d e s a r t i s t e s d u X V I I I e siècle français (Paris, 1930), 157, 304; , C . H. Hart, " L i f e
Portraits of General Washington," MacClure's M a g a z i n e , VIII (Feb. 1897),
304; J. J . Foster, A D i c t i o n a r y of P a i n t e r s o f M i n i a t u r e s (London, 1926),
Mantle Fielding, D i c t i o n a r y o f A m e r i c a n P a i n t e r s (Philadelphia, [1926]), etc.
He is of course mentioned in such volumes as Adolph B. Benson and Naboth
Hedin, S w e d e s i n A m e r i c a , 1 6 3 8 - 1 9 3 8 (New Haven, 1938) esp. pp. 490-491.
Most thorough account to date is that by Axel Gauffin in Ord och Bild, XXVII
(1918), pp. 65-80, but this is concerned chiefly with the artist's European
career. Very few of Wertmüller's own letters survive, probably because he
asked that they be destroyed; an interesting group of letters to h im was pub­lished
by Ernst E. Areen, G u s t a v i a n s k a Konstnärsbref: C. F . S u n d v a l l t i ll
A . U. Wertmüller (Stockholm, 1916).
In the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia are two type­script
accounts: Henry C. Conrad, " A Sketch of Adolph Ulric Wertmüller,"
read before the Historical Society of Delaware . . . April 19, 1897; and a more
pretentious account by Fredrick H. Shelton, "Adolph Ulric Wertmüller, Por­trait
Painter . . ." prepared for the Swedish Colonial Society, Philadelphia,
March, 1920.
The pages that follow are merely the first part of the total diary, which
runs to 137 MS pages, and which will be published in a few months with a
more complete biographical sketch, by the Swedish Pioneer Historical Society.
42
[Notes on Diary at end—after p. 32 bis.]
Journal of the land located on Naaman's Creek begun at
the time that I left Philadelphia when I bought there the
said land and continued during the following years, etc. . . .
ADOLPH ULRIC WERTMÜLLER,
1803—
1803 April 28, 1803, I bought from Mr. John Warder
April 28 and son, as adminstrators of mortgaged land, the
title to the land located near Naaman's Creek for
the sum of $5800 cash which I paid to Mr. John
Warder as balance and complete payment for the
aforesaid land, on condition that he have the
right to move away two stacks of hay, the frame­work
of an open shed for horses or carriages,
etc. (in pieces), a small summer house or latticed
pavilion, a portable iron fireplace, and an iron
support for the pots, etc. in the kitchen fireplace.
I received from Mr. John Warder all the papers
concerning the land at the moment that I paid him
the money mentioned above.
After I had bought the land, my first occupation
was to find a boat to carry our possessions and us
to the land. I had the good fortune to find, for ten
dollars, the same day that I acquired the land, a
large boat, which carried wood to Philadelphia,
and we set our time of departure for the next
morning.
April 29 April 29, in the morning at the break of day, we
got up and began to prepare our possessions. Only
one cart came and we lost much time waiting for
the other two carts which failed to appear. At
eight o'clock when the carts had not come, I went
at once and finally, after much trouble, I found
three others; then we sent our possessions off to
the boat at full speed.2 Although we had been at
'work packing for weeks in advance, we had just
finished packing the quantity of objects which we
43
had with us — not just furniture but boxes with
my books, paints, paintings, utensils, etc. for paint­ing,
plaster works, etc. Finally, at eleven o'clock,
all was loaded on the boat. This delay made us
miss a part of the outgoing tide3 on the river,
which had already begun at eight o'clock in the
morning, but fortunately for us, we had a favor­able
wind. We left Philadelphia extremely tired,
but delighted with our acquisition and with the
good fortune of coming to live in the country.
We were however prepared to have some diffi­culties
in the beginning — in view of the fact
that neither of us was accustomed to living in
the country and in addition to that we were per­fectly
ignorant in all that concerns agriculture.
As soon as we were a little distance from the city,
we made a fire and began to make coffee for
lunch, for I had not had the time to take the
least thing to refresh myself during the whole
morning. (Charlotte, who was married to Abra­ham
Wriet, was with us then and she had with her
her husband's daughter, aged about 8 yrs.) After
having eaten lunch, we saw with pleasure that
we were going along well, that the wind continued
to be good. We dined the best we could and after
that we awaited patiently our arrival at Naaman's
Creek. We arrived at seven o'clock in the evening
at the mouth of Naaman's Creek (a small river
emptying into the large river, the Delaware)
and after some consultations and difficulties on
the part of the Captain, we finally decided to
try to go up the creek with the large boat. After
some trouble, we arrived near the mill at the end
of the day after sunset, and there we tied up
the boat at the small landing which is there along­side
the land which I bought, near the mill be­longing
to Mr. Perquin [Perkins]. Evening and
darkness having fallen, we decided to leave our
44
possessions on the boat until the next morning.
My wife had got off the boat at the mouth of the
creek and with Charlotte, Eliza, the daughter of
her husband and our little bound servant, Re­becca,
had gone across the plain to the house
on our land, where she entered through the
window. She found the house so stinking that
she had difficulty in staying there, and they
gathered up old pieces of wood around the house
and began to make a fire to purify the air. It
was impossible to go down into the cellar, for
the smell given off by putrid water, which had
remained nearly a year in the cellar and which
half filled it, stopped them. After that, they scrub­bed
the house. The Captain, his man and I ar­rived
at the house with William, who lived on
the other side of the road in the log house belong­ing
to the land. I had a letter asking him to give
me the key to the house, which he did, and he
then accompanied me to the boat before we went
up the creek and boarded the boat at the mouth
of the creek to show us the way (so that we would
not hit a rock which was on our side of the
creek) and to show us the landing, which he did.
When we arrived at the house, we found it well
cleaned, a fire made,21 and a little to eat and drink
from our provisions. They drank to our health and
happiness on the place, then we decided to return
to the boat to sleep, since the odor of the house
prevented our remaining there without risk of
being sick.
April 30 We passed the night on the boat and the next
morning we returned to the house to stay there.
We carried with us all that we could. They began
already at the break of day to unload all the
large pieces that we had on the boat and by work­ing
hard they succeeded in unloading everything
during the morning. I rented from Mr. Chelly
45
(a neighbor) an oxcart which, with the aid of
three men, carried all my possessions to the house
during the day.
May 2 As soon as our possessions were in the house and
the boat was gone from the creek (which was
done the same day — the next day it left the
mouth of the creek) we began to install ourselves
and to work in the garden. We hired for that pur­pose
two men, Patrick and William, and at the
end of a week we had finished planting the princi­pal
part of our garden. During another week the
two men dug a round hole to drain off the water
in the cellar, and then they repaired the gates.
May 6 During all this business and work I left for New­castle,
May 6, to have the deed to my land re­corded
and I returned the same day to Naaman's
Creek.
May 8 After having had great difficulty in finding a hired
girl, we found one named Rebecca, who was-an
excellent girl for the work and who helped us
considerably in putting in order all things on the
farm in such a way that everything went to the
satisfaction of my wife and we were extremely
content with the girl.
May 9 For twenty dollars I bought a brown cow about
ten years old from Mr. Philips, a neighbor near
the river a mile away from me. At the same time,
I bought three small suckling pigs for our farm,
and we bought several hens and small pullets
from the new Rebecca Bradford.
May 14 Since that time, we have worked in the garden,
etc., until May 14, and then I bought six hens
from Mr. Brown.
May 16 I bought from Mr. Philips two other cows with a
calf, of which one [cow] twelve years old, had
only one eye and was due to have a calf in two
months and the other, not more than six years
46
old, had a calf eight days old. All three cows
which I bought are very good, giving much milk.
May 17 On May 17, I returned to Newcastle to get the
deed. I had to stay a long time waiting for them
to copy it in the records and could not get it
until five o'clock in the evening. After that, I
got all possible information concerning the can­celing
of and the acknowledging of payment of
the debt owed by Mr. Lee Coffre to Mr. William
Connel, but, although I paid Mr. Read, a lawyer,
four dollars, I could obtain no information other
than that I should look for that man in the state
of Pennsylvania. When my business was finished,
I returned the same day to Naaman's Creek.
May 21 I hired William to work in the garden for two
days.
May 22. This day I bought from Mr. Philips a rooster and
some pullets and then we began to have some
eggs and a hen with chickens.
May 24 I received a plow which I had ordered. This plow
was very poorly made with a poor point4 and poor
wood badly finished, in such a way that I was
very much dissatisfied that Patrick had recom­mended
such a poor workman to me. This plow
was a light plow for one or two horses.
June 1 I left for Philadelphia. There I acquired several
things indeed useful for working the land, and at
the same time I received for the purpose of family
and farm expenses some money which I took back
with me. Captain Lee, one of my acquaintances in
Philadelphia, had had an old boat repaired and
had intended it for me at the price of thirty-one
dollars with sails and oars (two pairs), etc. I
could not do otherwise than to take it from him
at this price on the condition that I should not
pay until after several months, in view of the fact
that it was impossible for me to pay it before be-
47
cause of the great need I had of money in the
country to make my land pay, etc. As soon as I
was ready to leave, I invited Miss Sophia (the
sister-in-law of Dr. Collin, rector of the Swedish
congregation in Philadelphia) as well as Mr.
Spindler, who had expressed the desire to come
to see my land, to come with me in the boat,
which Captain Lee had promised to navigate
himself as far as my land. He had said that I could
take in the boat with me all that I wanted and he
would take care of it. In consequence, I bought
some scythes, their handles, some scrapers [gra­toires]
etc. and I set the day of departure for my
land for June 15.1 had all that I had bought car­ried
on carts to the house of Captain Lee, and
he had the kindness to carry it to the boat. This
gave him a great deal of trouble and tired him
to such an extent that he complained to his wife
and found it very bad that I had given him so
much trouble, while he had really brought that
upon himself in offering to do everything. Finally,
all was loaded on the boat with the exception
of three pretty pots of flowers which Captain
Lee absolutely did not want to take. So they
stayed there and were lost. At the moment of
departure, Charlotte, who at the arrival of Re­becca
(the big one) had returned to her husband,
wanted to return with me to my land. I had,
during my stay in Philadelphia, contracted for
the service of the son of Charlotte's husband for
fourteen years. He came with his father to the
mayor of Philadelphia and signed his contract
himself at the age of six years and six months,
which infinitely surprised the mayor and me.
In consequence, the young man, Charlotte, Miss
Sophia, Mr. Spindler, and Captain Lee were too
many to leave together in so small a boat. Captain
Lee went then to find a friend not far away from
the boat, and that friend showed him not far from
48
there another boat to take. We all embarked in
my boat and we were soon near the other, after
which Captain Lee distributed us, the little boy,
Mr. Spindler, and me in the big boat and Captain
Lee and Miss Sophia in the one which I had
bought from him and in which were all my effects,
and we continued on our way rowing along the
river. After some time, Mr. Spindler, who was
with me, began to drink a bottle of [ ]5
and one of wine one after the other. In spite of all
my pleading he did not want to stop. He began
to get drunk. After a few moments then he began
to want to catch up with the other boat and to
row so strongly that I was obliged to ask him
to stop, but he [ ]6 and swore and did
not want to. It was then that I became angry.
After I had done, without avail, all that was in
my power to steer the boat smoothly while dis­puting
with him, Captain Lee and Miss Sophia,
seeing my difficulty, approached. Miss Sophia
suggested coming into the boat where I was with
Mr. Spindler, and I accepted her proposal at once.
She came and took the rudder in such a way
that I was much relieved, for she steered so well
that in spite of all the trouble that Mr. Spindler
gave himself, he could not turn the boat from its
course, and all he got out of it was tired hands
and an argument with everybody. Finally, after
much difficulty, we could get no farther than Huc
[Marcus Hook] a small port two miles distant
from my land, a little upstream. The outgoing
tide8 having stopped, we were obliged to stay
there until it started running again. We ate a little
and drank to refresh ourselves and so that Mssrs.
Lee and Spindler could rest after their hard work,
for they were obliged to walk in the mud to pull
the boat to land. Miss Sophia and Charlotte, as
well as I myself, went on foot as far as the road
which goes to Marcus Hook. Miss Sophia then
49
decided to go with Charlotte to my land, and I
walked to Marcus Hook to find the boat again at
the rendezvous where it was. Captain Lee had
left the large boat at the place where we de­barked,
and we all three came in my boat. With
much difficulty, late in the evening after darkness
had fallen, we arrived at my land, extremely
tired and with Captain Lee in a bad humor from
having undergone so much, and making me un­derstand
that I was the cause of it. This made,
me feel very bad. We ate supper right away and
went to bed tired out.
Mr. Spindler, after coming into the house, became
very polite, and his bad humor passed entirely.
My wife had, the tenth of June during my absence,
bought three and one half bushels of potatoes
from Mr. Philips, who with his [ques] put them in
the ground. He worked with one of his horses since
I had but one which I had brought from Phila­delphia
with me. He tried that one hitched to the
plow, and it pulled with the other horse reason­ably
well for the first time.
June 16 I paid William for a day and a half of work. The
next day Captain Lee and Mr. Spindler went back
to get their boat at Marcus Hook and returned
by the river to Philadelphia. Miss Sophia re­mained
here until the third day after her ar­rival
and returned to Philadelphia.
June 17 Early in the morning we discovered that during
the night our cow (the bay) with one eye had
had a heifer calf which we decided to raise.
June 25 I bought from Mr. Philips two other small pigs
of the same age as the first ones that I bought
from him.
June 26 After working for seven weeks, Rebecca Brad­ford
left my house. She was very impertinent.
First she said that she was promised for six weeks
50
as a nurse for a woman in childbed and that
she was obliged to leave us during that time,
but that she intended to return. However, after
some remark that my wife made to her she re­newed
her impertinences and threatened my wife
with leaving the house, to which my wife con­sented
at once. She gave my wife a week to look
for a girl, but it was impossible to find one. In
consequence, on the day set (a Sunday) she
wanted to leave in the evening, saying that she
wanted to find a girl for my wife, but my wife
not being able to rely on her good faith wanted
to go herself to try to find one. Rebecca Bradford
wanted to stop her from doing that and to stay
until night. In this way, my wife was obliged to
leave and she departed at once. At eight o'clock
at night my wife returned. She had hired a mu­latto
woman named Molly, who was a good worker
in the hay and with other things in the garden.
June 30 I left on horseback in the company of Mr. Adam
Williamson to go to a public sale where I bought
a plow, a big rake (a harrow), a white horse, and
several other things on three months' credit. Mr.
Adam Williamson signed my note and I signed
his; he had also bought several small things. We
returned together, and I left the horse there until
two days later, and then, when Mr. A . Williamson
went to get his things, he brought the horse back
for me. It was nine or ten years old.
The same day, the 30th of June, I began to have
the clover in the field on the other side of the
road, as well as that on the side of the garden
cut by two Negroes and a mulatto who mowed
very fast. After having worked two days they
could not continue, because they had promised
to work somewhere else. I had much trouble with
the hay. An Irishman, William (Warder's man),
who lived in the log house on the other side of
51
the road, had promised to come to cut the clover
before I talked to the Negroes, but had gone back
on his word to me, because I got the two Negroes,
who worked for less than I had agreed to give
him, that is 75 cents a day with a pint of brandy
and their meals.9 This had displeased him. He
and Patrick thought that they could lead me
around as they wished and fleece me of my money,
but they were wrong. Seeing their obstinacy and
their laziness, I no longer wanted either one or
the other to work for me.
July 4 I hired Samuel Aston, a man whom Mr. Philips
recommended to me as in his prime for work on
a farm and a good farmer, for one month at
twelve dollars a month, with the understanding
that he should continue winter and summer for
the same price. He was very reluctant to come
to work for me and set his price very high. He
was supposed to come ten days before he came,
but he delayed until July 4th10 and I put off from
day to day the cutting of the hay until June 30,
which made the clover dry up in such a manner
that I had only two-thirds of what I would have
had if the clover had been cut on time.
July 11 I sent Samuel to get the horses shod to be ready
to bring in the hay which was beginning to dry
up too much, but not having any cart at all, I
could not do it. The one which Mr. Derik was to
make for me was not finished, so that it was
necessary to wait patiently. Finally, it was fin­ished,
and I was to go to get it as soon as the time
would permit me.
July 16 Having decided to sow some buckwheat and not
having time to go to Philadelphia myself, I asked
Mr. John Chelly, my neighbor, to buy, when he
went to the market in the said city, a bushel of
clover seed and a half-bushel of timothy11 seed
52
to sow with the buckwheat. This he did and
brought me good grain.
July 18 From the 15th to the 18th of July, I had the hay
brought in and I went at that time to get the
cart for the purpose. I brought the hay in with
my own horses (that is that which was cut in
the first field) and put it into four stacks. The
clover was brought in before and put into the
barn or above the stable.
NOTES ON THE DIARY:
1. The text reads: comme e x e c u t e u r [de] fond h i p o t h e ­qué,
which is not perfectly clear in meaning. It is one of the
many cases where the English rendering must settle for the
reasonable rather than the precise translation.
2. Here the writer says a toute force when obviously he
means à, toute v i t e s s e.
3. In several places Wertmüller uses words for tide
exactly the reverse of what he must intend to say; here
he says flu, but should have said reflux, for with Naaman's
Creek being downstream nothing else would make sense.
4. Fin means a number of things, including the point
of a joke; its translation here as the point of a plow is
justified only on the grounds of necessity and that Wert­müller's
imperfect knowledge of French led him to many
such odd usages.
5. The significant word is illegible; hereafter a vacant
space with no further notation will indicate an indecipher­able
word.
6. Pista; untranslatable.
7. Since Huc because of its location must mean Marcus
Hook it will be so translated hereafter. The little community
here was still often called Finland after its original settlers,
and sometimes the term Finland was applied to the region
between Marcus Hook and Naaman's Creek.
8. See note 3.
9. This sentence had been worked over, and because of
the bracketed and illegible words, and the absence of a
main verb, translation required that considerable liberties
be taken; the above seems to be the sense of the passage.
10. This and some of the other dates on this page of
the MS are not perfectly clear.
53
11. Text reads: (timoti ou) L u j e r n e .
12. Here the name is given as Tranne, probably because
Wertmüller had not yet learned how to spell it; later entries
use Travanne or de Travanne.
13. Text reads: trouk ou t u y e a u de 8 lance.
14. Text says bang, which is evidently the English bank
used in the sense of embankment or levee; later Wert­müller
spells it variously banq, banc, and finally bank.
15. The subject is omitted; passage reads: etroyant que
son augmanta.
18. Although the name has not previously appeared it
is probably that Absalon is the "fils du m a r y de Charlotte"
mentioned in the entry of 15 June, 1803. Cf. entries for 8
October, 1803, and 25 February, 1804.
17. The word is tour, but the context gives no guidance
as to what this broad-purpose word may signify here —
it could mean windlass, cider-press, bread board, or any
one of several other things.
18. Nov. 26 and 24 are thus reversed in the text.
19. Here the word is reflu, although the context implies
flood tide. Cf. note 3.
20. Wertmüller consistently uses the contemporary spell­ing
Racoon or Racoon's; since it has become Raccoon this
spelling will be used in the translation.
21. This is evidently Capt. Felix Fisler. See Amandus
Johnson, The Journal and Biography of Nicholas Collin
(Philadelphia, 1936), p. 38.
22. In Sweden the traveler had the established right to
food and assistance from dwellers along the highway. Hence
this little incident illustrates a bit of the "culture conflict"
that created frequent misunderstandings in the diverse
American society.
54